In 2002, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones became the first major movie to be shot entirely on digital video, even though, back then, it had to be transferred on to 35mm film for most cinemas to show it. The producers of Attack of the Clones estimate that they spent $16,000 on 220 hours of digital tape. If they had used the same amount of film, it would have cost them $1.8m.
Yet the real opportunity to axe costs digitally comes long
after the final scene is shot. To produce and ship a 35mm print to an American
cinema costs about $1,500. Multiply that by, say, 5,000 prints for a big movie
and it comes to $7.5m. Digital formats can do the same job for 90 per cent
less.
Overlaid on this is the growing importance of global
box-office receipts. Digital distribution makes it feasible to launch a movie
simultaneously on tens of thousands of screens across the planet, from
Cartagena to Kolkata – and, while you’re at it, on platforms such as iTunes and
on aeroplanes.
Moreover, no matter how carefully it is handled, every time
a 35mm film print is run through a projector, it will degrade, collecting
blemishes – scratches, tears, worn edges – that affect the viewing quality.
Titanic reportedly played for so long in theatres that some prints fell apart
in the projectors. In this sense, film is indeed mortal, perishable, fragile –
human. This analogy would make digital “immortal”. You show a digital copy of a
film once or a thousand times and the quality remains undiminished while the
studios’ bottom lines grow.
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